Superboy and the Invisible Girl
by singingowl
Summary: After the end of Next to Normal, Natalie slowly starts to see Gabe too and does not know what to do. Rated T for a short bit about suicide. One-shot.


My mother was crazy. She saw her dead son, a son who had died when he was only fourteen months old. But she made him grow up like he would have if he hadn't died. So before she ran away, my mother saw my brother as an eighteen year old boy, handsome, funny, and the perfect son. So I wasn't surprised when she started to ignore me. She lived in a world with the perfect son, someone I could never compare to. Nothing I would or could do possibly could compare to this made-up boy. So I grew up by myself. My father was too busy trying to take care of my mother or wallowing in his own self-pity to notice me. I would spend hours at the piano, playing away my sorrows.

When I first met Henry, I thought he was a dream. Finally, someone noticed me. Finally someone cared. He gave me a way to forget all of my troubles: drugs and clubs. I was the OCD girl turned bad. Someone who didn't care anymore about pleasing her parents. Someone who thought that all she needed was Henry.

But that's not true. I needed more and more drugs and clubs to forget my home life. Soon, I was addicted. Henry was worried about me. I was worried about myself, but I wanted the drugs. No, I needed the drugs. I finally had a release from my troubles, so I wasn't going to give it up so easily.

This is all before my mother forgot me. This was before she ran away.

My mother got a treatment that made her forget her dead son, but she forgot nineteen years of her life in the process. She forgot her marriage and my existence. I was broken, but I gave off the impression that I didn't care. Only Henry caught the signs of my pain. He convinced me to confide in him, so I told him all about "Superboy and Invisible Girl": my brother and me. I told him all about my mother's hallucinations and my father's depression. He only hugged me closer, which is perfect because I did not want pity. I wanted someone strong to help me through my chaotic life, which Henry was more than happy to be that for me. And finally I had someone who could see past my OCD tendencies and my rough family life.

My happiness did not last long. Soon, my mother's memories came back. She remembered her "superboy". She remembered me. But _she_ couldn't handle her life, so she did what I always thought about doing. She ran. She said that she would come back. She never did. My mother's absence left a deep impression in my father. He fell deeper into his depression.

Then one day, I came home earlier than usual and I saw my father talking to the air. I listened to what he was saying and heard him talking to "Gabe", my brother. My mother's leaving finally broke my father and he went mad just like my mother did. I caught him multiple times talking to Gabe before I took him to the same doctor as my mother often visited before she left.

It took him a year and tons of treatments like mother had before he left too. He said the same empty promises as my mother: he said he needed space, that he will be back shortly. The police called me two days later and told me my father had committed suicide in a river one hundred miles from my house. I was all alone in the world. Henry was my only friend.

I moved in with Henry. We lived a relatively normal life; we ate, slept, and joked around. About a month after I moved in with Henry, I started to see an unfamiliar boy following me around. He was at the grocery store when it was my turn to get the groceries. He was at the street corner, just watching me drive by. He was at the mall, never doing anything. He only stared at me. He always wore the same clothes too: a purple tee-shirt and jeans. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place where I had seen him before. I told Henry about this boy a couples weeks after I first saw him. Henry was silent for a while but he soon suggested that I ignore this boy and hope he went away. I did exactly as Henry told me to do. But it didn't work, the boy still followed me around.

One day, as I walked into my old house to get an article of clothing I had left behind, I saw the boy sitting in my living room. He looked so at home that for a moment I thought he had always been here in this house.

"Who are you?" I asked the boy. He turned around to look at me, a wide grin stretching across his face.

"Aw Natalie, do you really not realize who I am?"

I studied his face more closely. His eyes entranced me. They looked like mine. They looked like my mother's. His nose was shaped like my father's and he had the same playful glint in his eyes as my father did before the depression killed the light in his eyes.

"Gabe" I breathed, understanding now who this boy was. He only nodded.

"But why are you here?"

"Can't a brother see his little sister, Nat?"

"Not when the brother is dead!" He feigned hurt. I only rolled my eyes.

"You've already hurt enough of my family. Why are you here to hurt me too?"

"I'm not here to hurt you, Nat. I want the life I might have known if I had lived."

"You can't Gabe, because you're dead!" I shouted. He looked coolly down at me.

"Don't you think I already know that?"

"Can't you just leave me alone?"

"Sorry sis, no can do," he said smugly, crossing his arms in front of his chest. I glared at him before running to my room to get my clothes that I came here for in the first place. As I was about to walk out the front door to drive back to Henry, Gabe shouted at me,

"You can't escape me, no matter how hard you try. Just accept that I am alive." I only shook my head and left the house.

For whatever reason, I did not tell Henry about me starting to go crazy. He wouldn't have understood and he might have left me. I couldn't bear one more person leaving me. But even though I tried to push Gabe out of my mind, he still dominated most of it. He started to seem more like a real person than someone who has been dead for twenty years. I started to absentmindedly drive back to my old house, not knowing why but feeling the strong urge to do so. I would never get out of the car; I would just drive right on past it. Sometimes I would park in front of my house, just looking at it. I would still see Gabe all around the town, but he did not try to speak to me. He only watched me.

Finally I got up the nerve to walk inside my old house again. There was Gabe, sitting on the couch as if he knew I was going to walk in the front door that day. He very well might have known, I will never be sure. We talked about anything and everything. I told him about my sucky life and he told me about my mother back before she left, before I was even born. I came everyday to my old house, just to see Gabe. Henry started to get suspicious; he thought I was cheating on him. I swore that I was not cheating. But he still didn't believe me. One day, he followed me to my old house. I did not know of his presence, but he told me later that he followed me to see what I was up to.

I walked inside and he snuck in after me through the unlocked back door. He saw me talking to thin air.

That day, Gabe asked me to come with him:

"There's a world I know. A place where we can go where the pain will go away. There's a world where the sun shines each day. I'll show you just where. In time I know you'll see; there's a world where we can be free. Come with me." We sat in silence for a couple seconds while I thought about this new information. There's a world that people love me, I won't feel alone anymore.

"Is Henry there?"

"No...not yet." I finally understood what Gabe was asking me to do, but if I was going to do it I had to know if there was anything else for me there.

"And what else is in this world?"

"Anything and everything you ever wanted. All your dreams will come true in this new world. All you have to do is follow me." And I followed him. I felt alone in this world, even though I had Henry. All of my family had left me. I felt that soon Henry would leave me and I would follow Gabe anyways. So I walked with Gabe out of the front door and Henry followed me. Gabe led me through the town and into a forest. I knew this forest. It is really dangerous because it gets really dark the deeper you go and there are lots of sudden cliffs that so many people have fallen off of and died. Gabe led me up to one of the cliffs and pointed down.

"That is the way to this new world. All you have to do is step off the edge."

"It's that easy?" He only nodded and continued to point downwards. I took a breath and was just about to step off when someone grabbed my wrist. Henry yanked me away from the cliff.

"What were you thinking? You almost died!"

"I know Henry." He hugged me close to him. I slowly put my arms around him. I saw Gabe glare at me and Henry before turning around and walking away. Henry pulled away and looked me in my eyes.

"You're crazy! Madness runs in your family."

What he said was true: madness does run in my family. I would still see Gabe around, but with Henry constantly at my side, afraid to take his eyes off me lest I try to commit suicide again, he never had the chance to talk to me alone. Sometimes I have dreams of what would have happened if I did take that step. Would I see my parents again? Would all of my dreams really come true? I struggled with the thought of what would happen if I took the step.

So now, as I stand on that same edge of the same cliff I stood on two years back, I wonder the same question I have been wondering ever since I was last here: Do I take the step? And my answer is...


End file.
